Fora Financial is an online, alternative lender based in New York City that provides merchant cash advances (MCAs) and short-term small business loans. Fora Financial offers business financing that can be used for a wide variety of working capital needs—with funding available in as few as 72 hours after approval.

Plus, with flexible requirements (including no specific credit score minimum), Fora Financial business loans are a faster and more easily accessible alternative to bank and SBA loans.

Fora Financial offers two distinct business financing products—short-term loans and merchant cash advances. Both of these Fora Financial business loans can be used for virtually any purpose, including purchasing inventory, making payroll, expanding your business, managing cash flow, and more.

Fora Financial’s short-term business loans are ideal for working capital needs—and compared to their merchant cash advance product—give you the option of daily or weekly repayment, instead of just daily repayment.

That said, Fora Financial recommends this type of financing for businesses in the construction, medical, auto, wholesale, and manufacturing industries.

Fora Financial’s merchant cash advances are well-suited for businesses that have significant debit and credit card sales and would prefer a repayment schedule that adjusts based on those sales. Fora recommends their MCAs for businesses in the service, restaurant, retail, medical, healthcare, and auto industries.

Generally, however, we’d recommend considering Fora’s short-term loan first—as MCAs can more easily cut into your cash flow and tend to be more expensive.

As you can see, the Fora Financial requirements vary slightly based on which of their two financing products you’re planning on applying for. That said, however, there are a few additional standard criteria Fora will take into account when evaluating your business loan application.

Here are some of the qualifications that you’ll want to keep in mind:

Fora Financial does not work with businesses in the following industries:

• Accounting
• Adult entertainment
• Auto sales
• Financial institutions
• Casinos and gambling
• Legal services
• Nonprofits

• Fora Financial does not work with businesses that have open bankruptcies or bankruptcies discharged within the last year.
• Fora Financial can work with any business entity type.
• Fora Financial can work with businesses who are looking to refinance their debt. They will refinance existing debt of up to 50% of your loan’s value.

• Three months of bank statements
• Three months of credit card statements (for merchant cash advance only)
• Business contact information—name, address, phone number
• Basic business details—entity type, tax ID number, industry type, date started
• Business financial information—annual business revenue, loan request amount, loan purpose, etc. 
• Property details about where your business is located
• Basic personal information about you, the business owner, and any additional owners
• Copy of your driver’s license
• Voided check from business bank account
• Proof of ownership of the business
• Tax returns, balance sheet, profit and loss statement (in some cases)

If you’re interested in business financing from Fora, you’ll be able to submit an online application quickly and easily on their website. Additionally, although an online-based process is a benefit of working with Fora Financial, they also offer a downloadable version of their application that can be faxed or emailed for business owners that would prefer to apply that way.

That said, for business owners who opt to apply online, Fora Financial’s process will follow these basic steps:

1. Fill out the one-page loan application. Regardless of the product you’re applying for, this simple application will ask for standard information about business owners, your business and its operations, as well as your financials.
2. Upload three months of business bank statements and—if you’re applying for a merchant cash advance—three months of credit card processing statements as well. With all of this information complete, you’ll be able to submit your initial application.
3. Next, Fora Financial will review your application, perform a soft credit pull (which won’t impact your credit score), and you should receive an initial quote with estimated term lengths, loan amounts, and interest rates.
4. If you decide to continue with the process, Fora will ask for additional documentation—including your driver’s license, a voided check, and proof of ownership in the business. In some cases, they may also ask for your tax returns, a balance sheet, and a profit and loss statement. At this point, they’ll send your application through final underwriting.
5. Overall, Fora Financial should be able to provide you with a decision in less than 24 hours.

With all of this in mind, if you’re approved for a Fora Financial business loan, you’ll receive an offer that includes all of your loan details. 

If you applied for a short-term loan, you’ll receive your final loan amount, terms, and interest rate. You’ll also receive information about your payment schedule—which will be either daily or weekly.

On the other hand, if you applied for a merchant cash advance, you’ll see your advance amount, holdback percentage—the set percentage that will be withheld from your credit card transactions—and interest rate.

It’s crucial to understand that for both of their financing products, Fora Financial charges interest in factor rates, so you’ll want to make sure that you convert your factor rates to APR to get a better understanding of how much your debt will actually cost.

You can use a short-term loan calculator or merchant cash advance calculator to perform these conversions. In addition, it’s also important to mention that Fora Financial charges an origination fee of 1% to 4%—so you’ll want to take this into account when calculating overall cost as well.

That said, as you evaluate your loan offer, you’ll notice that Fora Financial does not require borrowers to offer up collateral. Unless there is an issue with repayment, Fora does not typically file a UCC lien against borrowers. 

Overall, if you decide to move forward with your Fora Financial business loan, you can receive access to your funds in as little as 72 hours.

Once you receive funding from Fora Financial, you’ll also receive access to an online account. With your online account, you’ll be able to monitor your transactions, view your account balance, and track your repayment progress.

If you have a short-term loan, you’ll pay it back through daily or weekly repayments, whereas the merchant cash advance product will require daily repayments. That said, if you’re able to repay your short-term loan ahead of schedule, then you won’t have to worry about prepayment penalties with Fora Financial.

In fact, in certain cases Fora Financial will even offer a prepayment discount for this product. Although typically, MCAs neither have a prepayment penalty nor a prepayment discount—because without a set term your final payback amount is the same regardless of how quickly you pay back the funds—Fora Financial’s website does mention early payoff discounts for their MCA product.

After you’ve paid down 60% of your debt with Fora Financial, you may be eligible to renew your funding. You’ll be able to work with Fora’s Relationship Management team to initiate the renewal process and upload required documentation directly to your online account.

Fora Financial customer service is available by both phone and email.

For business owners who are interested in applying for financing, Fora offers their sales customer support phone number at 877-514-8062 and email sales@forafinancial.com. In addition, as you’re going through the application process, Fora will assign a Capital Specialist to work with you who can help answer any questions that you may have.

That said, Fora Financial also offers a general customer service support phone number at 855-326-8523 and email customerservice@forafinancial.com. They also have a general info@forafinancial.com email address available.

For more specific inquiries—like renewals, marketing, and accounting, Fora Financial includes contact information on their website here. This page also includes a comments form where you can reach out to their team as well.

Overall, the Fora Financial customer service team is available Monday through Friday from 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET.

How do small business owners feel about their experience working with Fora Financial?

Overall, Fora Financial reviews lean pretty positively—this alternative lender has an average of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Trustpilot, 3.4 out of 5 stars on Google Reviews, and 4.4 out of 5 stars on BestCompany. Although Fora does not have a great review history (with only 10 reviews) on the Better Business Bureau website, they are a BBB-accredited business with an A+ rating.

That said, taking a closer look at these online reviews, you’ll find that many positive reviews mention the following: 

• How easy and quick Fora’s application and funding process is
• Great, professional customer service—many business owners mention that they have continued to maintain a relationship with Fora Financial after they funded them the first time
• That Fora gave their business access to capital when they needed it

More negative Fora Financial reviews, on the other hand, tend to focus first and foremost on cost. Many business owners mention the high cost of debt and frequent repayments and the effect this financing model has on their cash flow.

Additionally, some negative reviewers discuss pervasive sales and marketing tactics from Fora Financial and their affiliates—specifically numerous phone calls, emails, and even direct mail. Finally, a handful of more negative Fora Financial reviews mention that customer service is slow to respond or hard to reach.

With all of this in mind, although they do not leave comments for positive reviewers, Fora Financial does respond to many negative reviews across different sites to try and resolve issues with borrowers.

Fora Financial is in Fundera’s Lender Network. The Fundera team has carefully vetted Fora Financial and determined that their offering is one of the best in their product category. When working with Fora Financial, you can be sure you’re getting transparent, fair pricing on a best-in-class product.